Benebell Wen’s I Ching, the Oracle: A Practical Guide to The Book of Changes is an ambitious, beautifully produced and very substantial book. It combines translation, commentary, divination practice, ritual, symbolism, historical material and esoteric interpretation in a single large volume. It is easy to understand why the book has attracted so much positive attention: it is visually impressive, rich in material, and clearly the result of an enormous amount of work.
It is also a book with a very distinct perspective. Wen is open about her background in occultism and ritual magic, and about the fact that she approaches the Yijing through a strongly spiritual and theistic lens. I do not object to that. The Yijing has never been only one thing, and there is nothing wrong with approaching it as a living divination tradition, a spiritual text, a ritual text, a philosophical text, or a combination of these. My criticism concerns something else: in the book Wen repeatedly presents material as historical fact, scholarly interpretation or direct translation. Once a book does that, those claims can and should be checked. Continue reading